William Cowper was an English surgeon and anatomist who, in 1698, published The Anatomy of the Humane Bodies, which gained him great fame and notoriety, and over the next eleven years he published a number of tracts on topics ranging from surgery and pathology to physiology and anatomy. Some have called Cowper's Anatomy of the Humane Bodies one of the greatest acts of plagiarism in all of medical publishing. In 1685, Govard Bidloo (1649-1713) published his Anatomia Humani Corporis in Amsterdam using 105 beautiful plates drawn by Gerard de Lairesse (1640?????1711) and engraved by Abraham Blooteling (1640-1690).

A Dutch version was later printed in 1690, entitled Ontleding des Menschelyken Lichaams, but when sales went poorly, Bidloo's publishers sold 300 copies of the unbound plates to William Cowper (or his publishers). Cowper proceeded to write a new English text to accompany the plates, many of them showing a great deal of original research and new insights. Cowper also commissioned nine new plates drawn by Henry Cooke (1642-1700) and engraved by Michiel van der Gucht (1660-1725), among which were front and back views of the entire musculature. The book was then published under Cowper's name with no mention of Bidloo or Lairesse, with the original engraved, allegorical title page amended with an irregular piece of paper lettered: "The anatomy of the humane bodies ...," which fits over the Dutch title. "The beauty of these engravings make this book the most remarkable English atlas of anatomy and got him to be reprinted several times during the seventeenth century." (Hahn and Dumaitre) "In fairness to Cowper, it must be pointed out that his was overwhelmingly superior to Bidloo's book. The term Cowper's ligament is sometimes applied to the attachment of the fascia lata to the pubic crest". (Mettler p. 69); Heirs of Hippocrates, 725 : "The atlas is a handsome production, with its life-sized copperplates and striking engraved title page." Wellcome II, p. 401; GARRISON 385; Russell, British anatomy 214